


the ritual is...intricate

by Anonymous



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harrow Nova | Harrowhark is Not the Reverend Daughter, Body Paint, Cunnilingus, F/F, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, TLT kink meme, spurious rituals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 16:54:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28941798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: For the TLT Kink Meme prompt: Gideon/Harrow body paint.
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 15
Kudos: 88
Collections: Anonymous, TLT Kink Meme





	the ritual is...intricate

You were summoned, a few days after winning your position as cavalier primary, to the Reverend Daughter. She was at the little bone altar in her bedroom, head bowed. 

“Nova,” she said, without turning around. “I am about to ask of you something you might find—strange. Certainly out of the ordinary. Perhaps even distasteful.”

You stood, perfect cavalier stance, in the doorway. You had been expecting this. Not  _ this _ , precisely, because you did not yet know what  _ this _ was, but you knew the Ninth House kept secrets from you, and you knew you would prise them from its pitted claws eventually.

“I am at your disposal,” you said, with no hint either of malice or fawnery.

She turned around. “Good.”

You stared. The Reverend Daughter was not as precise with her face paint as one might hope, but she always  _ did _ it. You had rarely seen her face bare like this. The indignity of it gave you a jolt of anger, low in your core.

“I have uncovered an ancient ritual, in the sacred texts. It requires some paint that I cannot do myself. I know you are only newly my cavalier, but I had been hoping you would assist me.”

“You only have to order me to,” you said, “and I will.” She acted like choice was something you had, when really it had always been denied you.

“I won’t order you to do this. I could do it myself, but I’d need several mirrors and a lot more lumbar flexibility.”

“I’ll do it,” you insisted, and started picking through the mess on top of her wardrobe, looking for greasepaint. She dropped her robe to the floor and kicked it. It slid halfway under her bed. You winced; you knew she didn’t dust. But then she started undoing the ties at the side of her shirt, and a blush raced up your face from neck to hairline, hot under your paint. 

“Oh,” you said, before you could stop yourself. “ _ Not  _ just your face.”

“No,” she said. “The ritual is...intricate. It requires a full-body application. The diagram showing it is over there on the table.”

You studied the example sheet longer than you had to. Better than watching the Reverend Daughter shed clothing like an unexcited new bride. The ritual, apparently, required the necromancer to cover as much skin as possible in a fiddly lacelike pattern. What this implied you shoved to the back of your mind; you were sure cavaliers elsewhere had been asked to do worse. When you couldn’t delay any longer you picked up the double pot of greasepaint and turned around. 

She was in just a bandeau and undershorts, standing uneasily, like her skin didn’t fit her. “I don’t want to make you do  _ everything _ ,” she said. 

Something inside you shrivelled. 

“Whatever you want,” you said evenly. “I’ll start with your arms.”

She held them out for you, obligingly, one at a time. There was the moment of first contact where she shivered, and goosebumps rose along her forearms, but you spread the paint grimly with your fingers, consulting the example sheet along the way. Up her arms and onto her upper chest, with her looking at the ceiling as though she couldn’t bear to see you touching her. Then her face, because you were in the vicinity. She closed her eyes for this, and you noted the place where her pulse throbbed in her neck as you smeared cold paint over it. Then down her body to her stomach, where a light dusting of hair trailed from navel to waistband. You covered this with paint, and she shuddered. You pretended not to notice. 

You fell into a trance, thinking only of the work, of replicating the pattern precisely. Soon her legs were covered, and her back, and you stepped away. 

It was dissatisfying. Incomplete. It seemed undignified, somehow, to paint one’s body and leave one’s underthings on. And you wouldn’t stand for the Reverend Daughter compromising her dignity. She herself didn’t seem to care much about holding onto it, so that left you to worry about it for her.

You had no ulterior motives lurking behind what you said next. None.

“I think,” you said, dry-mouthed, “that it doesn’t make sense to only do a part of your body.” You waited for her to take your meaning, and then you continued, “I would be happy to—”

“No,” she said, nodding vigorously, “no, yes, I mean, I think that—yes, you’re correct.”

You swallowed. “Good.”

The paint felt even colder on your fingers when you dipped them in, this time. She unwound her bandeau to allow you unfettered access to her back, and you continued your tracery over the stripe of smooth brown skin, connecting painted edge to painted edge. You concentrated on the pattern, yes, but also your own breathing. She could not know that this rattled you, that she was the first and only other person whose skin you had seen so much of.

You could do anything, with her bare back to you. You could dig your fingernails in. You could make her bleed. You could put your teeth to her skin and chew through her ribs and claw out her weak necromancer’s heart.

You did not do this. You completed the pattern, edge to edge, and breathed like a normal, non-homicidal person.

But then she turned around, and your breath stuttered in your chest. You stood there, dumbly, for a few seconds, pointedly not looking down. A back was one thing. Breasts were quite another. 

“Harrow,” she said, almost gently, “are you all right?”

Was  _ she _ ? You were fine. You were  _ fine. _

You did not answer her, but took back up your task. You had to look, then, to get the lines right, but you did your best not to  _ see. _ You were perfectly fine, running your bare finger over soft breast, hard sternum. You were chill. 

But she couldn’t think you were avoiding anything. 

You spread a whorl of white across her peaked nipple. The Reverend Daughter’s breath hitched in her chest; probably she hated that she had to have you do this. 

If you were in her place, you wondered, would you hate it too? Or would you relish the opportunity to have your cavalier before you painting ritual wards on your bare body? Have your cavalier  _ kneeling  _ before you—when had you knelt? The when or why didn’t matter: the problem before you was how to remove those undershorts without disturbing the pristine paint all up and down her legs. 

You drew a small knife from a secret sheath and dimly registered the intake of breath from above you. Steel slid against the soft skin at the side of her hip, and when you cut away the fabric, it was a gasp that fell from her lips. This deterred you not at all, and when you sliced through the other side, the fabric fell to the floor, and you found her dripping before you. 

_ Oh. _

“Harrow,” she said, and whether it was a plea or an apology you did not know; you did not care. You dipped your fingers into—

_ You could do it, you could ruin her— _

—into the paint. And carried on with your work. 

You spread the paint as close to the triangle of hair between her legs as you dared, and then tapped her lightly on the hip to turn her. You weren’t going to scrabble about on your knees before her, but doing it like this made it feel like she was on display for you. A thing which, you realized, you did not mind. 

Exactly when your concept of “take her apart” had transmuted from _sectional with weaponry_ to _sexual with step-on-me_ , you did not know. Either way, you wanted to make her scream. 

But. Only if she asked you to. 

If she asked you to, you’d sink your teeth into her flank, hard enough to bruise. You’d put your lips to the hollow of throat and collarbone, where the skin was soft and yielding. You’d press your tongue past the joint of inner thigh and groin and devour her until she cried out and couldn’t stop. 

But she did not, and you did not, though your hands were slow and coaxing over the last unfinished portions of skin, drawing it out. You had done this out of a sense of cavalierly duty, but now you were prolonging it out of some feeling that certainly wasn’t a cavalier one. __

When it was done, you sat back on your heels and looked up, admiring your handiwork. The full effect was startling: a skeleton in the abstract, more nonsense than practical. Fully black and white, hard-lined and clean—but for the shocks of red hair at head, between legs, and, when she stretched, under arms. 

She looked down at herself, examining your work for the first time—and soon her gaze caught on yours. You hadn’t moved, still at her feet, expectant. For propriety, one of you should have yielded, backed away. For curiosity, neither of you did. 

“Well?” you said. “You should go perform your ritual.”

“I should,” she said slowly. “But there’s a problem.”

“I’ll solve it.”

“I’d never ask you to—“

“Then order me to.”

You stared up at her, blank, defiant. Inside you were thrumming with want like a plucked string. 

She closed her eyes. “This ritual requires my mind to be clear. I am currently—very distracted.”

“I can fix that,” you said. She didn’t react to that, but when you reached out a hand and touched her, gently, ever so gently, on the inner thigh, she looked down and said, “You don’t have to.”

“Don’t you want me to?” Your traitor mouth knew the answer before she even gave it: it started watering. You composed yourself enough to nudge her legs apart and looked back up at her. “I want to.”

“Yes,” she breathed, and you leant forward.

The only thing you had clean was your tongue, so that was all you could use, and the angle was awkward and bad. At first you were tentative, feeling out what she liked by the noises she made and the way her hips rocked into your face; and then, once you had a good idea, you grew bold and merciless.

You longed to touch her, to run your fingers along iliac crest and up to breast, but that would smear the paint, and make this more than it was. The sounds she was making pierced you right to the core, and the taste of her made you a little bit crazy, salty and complex like nothing else. You had been wet for ages now, and there was nothing for it but to wipe your paint-covered hand off on your shirt and slide it down into your trousers, working yourself as you buried your face into her.

Her hands wound their way into your hair and pulled. You moaned against the slick heat of her before you could stop yourself and were immediately mortified. This was for her, not you. 

“Harrow,” she whispered, breathless, “keep going.”

If she could speak you weren’t doing this right. You abandoned yourself and redoubled your efforts on her.

She’d been fucking kidding herself if she thought she could make you spend an hour painting her with your bare fingers and it wouldn’t change anything between you. You’d been fucking kidding yourself too. You still craved violence of a kind, but you channeled that energy into eating her out so thoroughly you hoped she’d forget who you were.

When she came, she pressed your head against her as though she never wanted to lose you, and you continued as she shook and shuddered , not caring that you could barely breathe, until she pushed you away.

You had completed her and taken her apart, and now you stood, not bothering to wipe your face. Let her see you, paint smeared jawless in service to the Ninth. Hers was still perfect, because you were nothing if not careful. She reached for you, tentative, possibly about to say something, but you stepped back, out of orbit. 

You still ached, but you would never dream of asking her to return the favor. You weren’t trying to clear your mind for any bone rituals; you could take care of yourself without her.

“Best of luck with your ritual, Reverend Daughter.”

You turned on your heel and left her to it.

* * *

Later that night, and for many nights after, you’d find yourself with one hand between your legs and the other clapped to your mouth, holding in the word that struggled to burst from your lips. 

_ Gideon. _

You knew if you said it you’d betray yourself. You knew if you said it once you’d never stop.


End file.
